Monday, June 03, 2013

"We have over here the bulk surveillance industry run by the National Security Agency that already has all these records. It has them all already. The National Security Agency—and this has come out in one court case after another—was involved in a project called Stellar Wind to collect all the calling records of the United States, every record of everyone calling everyone over years. And the result of that lay out the entire community and political structure, based upon who people are friends with. You can infer that by who calls who, and what the status is by the relative flow of calls around the country, to suck out the entire community structure of the United States. That has already been done. Those calling records already enter into the national security complex.

What we’re talking about here are mechanisms to use that information in a court case, and therefore it has to be clean. This is the dirty team; this is the clean team. And so, these are maneuvers to pull people into court cases that will become public to set a deterrent against national security journalism. And the most pernicious aspect of that is the abuse of the Espionage Act and other mechanisms to try and conflate the activities of a source with the activities of a journalist or a publisher, and to try and say that whenever a journalist deals with a source, they’re in fact engaged in a conspiracy. And if there’s an allegation—of course, allegations can be very easily made, placed on the table, just invented from thin air—that a source’s behavior affects national security and is therefore espionage, and therefore, extend that allegation over to the journalist and to the source—and to the publisher. In the case of Rosen, they have done that in order to get at Rosen’s emails and other records, to then back reflect onto the source or onto other sources. You know, it is simply a disgrace. It is unethical conduct. It is politically worrying conduct. It is chilling conduct. And it is—why is it being done? Because they believe they can get away with it. It is part of advancing the frontier of the national security state to roll on over the First Amendment and every other traditionally accepted U.S. value."

They already have all the information - and just think how useful Facebook and similar social networking sites have been to them, leading one to assume they have been backed by the national security apparatus for nefarious purposes all along - but what they have has been gathered illegally (essentially a global wiretapping operation without warrants), so they have to finesse the legislation, using the global war on terror and statutes intended to be used against actual spies, to sneak inadmissible evidence into the court system. Note the circularity - an allegation is made that national security is at stake, allowing the evidence to be heard, evidence which consists of a journalist and a source discussing issues that might be construed as involving national security, a discussion which is therefore a conspiracy in itself, thus confirming that the evidence should have been admitted, and thus cleaning part of their mountain of illegally obtained evidence.

How is it exactly that Assange is still labeled by many phony conspiracists as a government plant?

"We have over here the bulk surveillance industry run by the National Security Agency that already has all these records. It has them all already. The National Security Agency—and this has come out in one court case after another—was involved in a project called Stellar Wind to collect all the calling records of the United States, every record of everyone calling everyone over years. And the result of that lay out the entire community and political structure, based upon who people are friends with. You can infer that by who calls who, and what the status is by the relative flow of calls around the country, to suck out the entire community structure of the United States. That has already been done. Those calling records already enter into the national security complex.

What we’re talking about here are mechanisms to use that information in a court case, and therefore it has to be clean. This is the dirty team; this is the clean team. And so, these are maneuvers to pull people into court cases that will become public to set a deterrent against national security journalism. And the most pernicious aspect of that is the abuse of the Espionage Act and other mechanisms to try and conflate the activities of a source with the activities of a journalist or a publisher, and to try and say that whenever a journalist deals with a source, they’re in fact engaged in a conspiracy. And if there’s an allegation—of course, allegations can be very easily made, placed on the table, just invented from thin air—that a source’s behavior affects national security and is therefore espionage, and therefore, extend that allegation over to the journalist and to the source—and to the publisher. In the case of Rosen, they have done that in order to get at Rosen’s emails and other records, to then back reflect onto the source or onto other sources. You know, it is simply a disgrace. It is unethical conduct. It is politically worrying conduct. It is chilling conduct. And it is—why is it being done? Because they believe they can get away with it. It is part of advancing the frontier of the national security state to roll on over the First Amendment and every other traditionally accepted U.S. value."

They already have all the information - and just think how useful Facebook and similar social networking sites have been to them, leading one to assume they have been backed by the national security apparatus for nefarious purposes all along - but what they have has been gathered illegally (essentially a global wiretapping operation without warrants), so they have to finesse the legislation, using the global war on terror and statutes intended to be used against actual spies, to sneak inadmissible evidence into the court system. Note the circularity - an allegation is made that national security is at stake, allowing the evidence to be heard, evidence which consists of a journalist and a source discussing issues that might be construed as involving national security, a discussion which is therefore a conspiracy in itself, thus confirming that the evidence should have been admitted, and thus cleaning part of their mountain of illegally obtained evidence.

How is it exactly that Assange is still labeled by many phony conspiracists as a government plant?